Monday, February 2, 2009

February 2009 is a great month to be a gamer and finally one of the heavy hitters for February has dropped a demo on Xbox LIVE and Sony Japanese PSN. First off I would like to mention I am a huge fan of the Resident Evil series.Resident Evil 5 is LIVE on Japanese PSN. According to, rumblings online it may hit EU PSN as soon as tomorrow and here in the US Thursday of this week. If you have not set up multiple regional accounts on your Sony PS3 ,I highly recommend you do so now!

After playing EA Dead Space for Xbox LIVE, I was extremely eager to give Resident Evil 5 a go. After downloading Resident Evil 5 this morning and playing the two levels that's in the demo offline. I have to say I am somewhat disturbed.

Resident Evil 5 graphics are very good, finally we get a HD Resident Evil. You begin either of the two stages in the demo with your female counterpart named Sheva Alomar who is an agent of the West African branch of the BSAA. While playing offline in single player mode. Sheva will be computer controlled, she will provide you with cover fire, assist you to get to out of reach platforms, revive you when you're injuried or you can swap items together. The AI for Sheva is good, she does a good job defending herself and reviving Chris when the end is near.

I did not have chance to play online, but you can see that playing with a friend for free can be a little more fun. What has disturb me about Resident Evil 5 is the controls. After playing Dead Space, you expect every next generation survival horror game to have a fairly competent control scheme. For some strange reason, controlling your character in Resident Evil feels like racing a Sherman tank in the desert. Yeah that bad, but if there's anything that will HURT Resident Evil 5 in future reviews would be the control scheme.

The control scheme for Resident Evil is the excact same as in Resident Evil 4 for Gamecube. Resident Evil 4 for Gamecube was a great experience at the time(2005). Fast forward four years later and add two super powerful next generation consoles, the controls feels antique. Chris Redfield feels slow unbearably slow, he turns slow, runs slow, and using your knife is a hideous affair. Aiming feels like a pain in the ass, when Chris Redfield runs around it's as bad if not worst than running in Fable II.

The controls for Resident Evil 5 could really make the entire game experience a frustrating affair. There are parts where you are swarm with enemies and to accurately target your foes was quite annoying. Sheva did a good enough job fighting and reviving me but Capcom should be reprimanded for dropping the ball on the control scheme on a once great franchise.

Sidenote: Resident Evil was always about survival horror and a few good scares for good measures. Resident Evil 5 looks and has the feel of a out right run and gun shooter. The full game maybe different, but from the demo, online video and pictures, it looks like much of Resident Evil 5 takes place in day light. How can we have a survival horror game that is mostly played in the day light in Africa? After playing the demo fro Resident Evil 5, I may consider this a rental first before I splurge $59.99 plus tax.

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comments:

thank you. someone finally agrees with me. i have been waiting over a year to buy RD5. I was pissing my pants waiting for it to download. this was a definite buy until when i played it. the controls are non customizable. yeah the in game graphics are better than the cut scenes. but what use are they if you can't play the game. that like having a 1000 HP car with only one gear. its absolutely, positively fucking retarded. i won't be buying this game nor even rent it. i guess if i played the other one. i would have been aware of having to hold L1 & R1 to shoot or L1 & square to reload. unless they patch a costom control layout i will never play this again and will other not to waste their 60 bucks. i'm done with PS3 and i'm gonna get one of my cousin's 4 broke 360's and send it in to get fix and get HALO WARS not because its halo but a RTS game on a console.

hey it's not the PS3 it's Capcom...RE5 controls is very dissapointing I do agree. But that's is why you have KillZone 2 and SFIV to ease the pain....Why d you want a broken 360? It will only break again?